


The Fall

by Icka M Chif (mischif)



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blanket Permission, Feels, Fluff, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Immortality, Major Character Undeath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 21:18:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10907658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischif/pseuds/Icka%20M%20Chif
Summary: “Heeeeey, Bunnny….” Jack’s grin is small and crooked, the same silly fond one he always gives Aster in greeting. “-I never told you my favourite myth, did I?”Aster stumbles over his words, vowels and consonants in a jumbled mess. Jack wants to talk about a silly conversation they had hours ago NOW? Now, while Jack is…Jack is…(spoiler notes at the endfor those worried about 'character death' tag')





	The Fall

* * *

"Heeeeey, Bunnny...." Jack's grin is small and crooked, the same silly fond one he always gives Aster in greeting. "-I never told you my favourite myth, did I?"  
  
Aster stumbles over his words, vowels and consonants in a jumbled mess. Jack wants to talk about a silly conversation they had hours ago NOW? Now, while Jack is...  
  
Jack is...

Aster glances away from Jack's smiling face, down at where a spear and several swords were sticking through Jack's chest and belly.  
  
Possibly a few arrows as well. Aster had **told** North that leaving barrels of weaponry laying around the Pole was a bad idea, especially with the dratted Elves wandering around.  
  
A low whine emerges from the back of Aster's throat as he looks up at Jack's face, which is peaceful, almost resigned. There's no hope or denial in Jack's eyes, just a sort of fondness that makes Aster's insides clench and twist.  
  
He's seen this expression before, on the battlefield, a friend sacrificing themselves for their friends, blood staining their bodies, hands, and faces. The look that they know what's coming next and there's nothing they can do to stop it.  
  
A look that Aster has seen far too many times in his long life.  
  
Jack had stepped in front of Aster, shielding Aster with his own body. Aster hadn't even seen it coming, realised what the Elves running around with small fireworks might mean. But **Jack** , the Guardian of Fun...  
  
"Icarus." Jack says, and there's faint wheeze in his breath, like the air in his lungs is escaping somewhere else. Like from his torso, with the giant doru spear through it.  
  
For a moment, Aster can't think of why Jack is mentioning the tosser who flew too close to the sun, and then he remembers their conversation about myths back at the Warren before North had summoned up to the Pole to look at some new toys before Jack disappeared to where ever he went for the summer.  
  
Back before Jack was stabbed, when he had been safe underground, surrounded by the greenness of the Warren.  
  
Jack raises a trembling hand, fingers pressing against Aster's muzzle. Aster's breath hitches, bracing for the metal sweet scent of blood to wash over him-  
  
Only there's frost. Sharp, clean ice.  
  
Jack never touches Aster, never allows Aster to touch him. Ever. It's an unspoken rule between them...  
  
"Dark ocean would drag him down." Jack smiles sweetly at him. "-So he flew close to the warmth he loved."  
  
No blood. There's no blood. There should be blood everywhere, splattered all over Aster, leaking from all the holes in Jack's body, bubbling from Jack's lips....  
  
Aster can feel Jack's fingers melt against his lips as the pieces suddenly come crashing together with a horrible sort of knowledge. Jack's smile widens. "See you in the F-"  
  
And Jack Frost liquefies and evaporates into the air on to the Workshop floor, like frost in the Springtime sun. His staff falls to pieces, scattering over the spear and swords that suddenly find themselves in midair with no support.  
  
North screams, and it's the only thing that keeps Aster from freaking out.

* * *

"Get out." North's voice is low and deep, a feral sounding thing. Aster swallows. It's the third time he's tried to check on North since the incident, and North has turned him away every time.

"North, I-"

" _Leave_." North swings an giant tree-trunk like arm in Aster's direction, and the pooka steps backwards, even though he knows he wasn't in striking range. "I can't.... I cannot _look_ at you!" North spits out. 

Aster sighs, closing his eyes and nodding. Phil nearly hadn't let Aster in to see North, and he kind of wonders if it wouldn't have been a wiser decision.

"Why did it have to be _Jack_?!" North whispers, his huge shoulders rounded in on himself. "You. You would have survived such a blow. But Jack-?"

"I know." Aster quietly agrees, his ears drooping along his back. As long as it missed both of his hearts, he would have been reborn again in the light. Aster, but different. It had happened before in the past, it would happen again in the future. Rarely did he keep the friends from a previous regeneration, he'd thought himself lucky to keep North, but now...

' _It should have been you_ ' hovers in the air. And Aster can't find it in himself to argue. 

Aster turns and walks out of North's workshop. 

He won't be back again. Not unless it's with Jack.

* * *

"Bunny." Tooth looks startled to see him. He can read the expressions flickering across her face, anger, guilt, sadness, resignation. "Please tell me you didn't try to see North again."

"Not after the last one." Aster shakes his head. He's kind of crazy in his old age, but not stupid. But it does his hearts good to know that Phil and Tooth keeping an eye on North. "He okay?"

Tooth shakes her head with a stern look and Aster sighs. She blames him too, but not as much. Hopefully enough that she'll answer him. "Got a question."

The crown of feathers on the back of Tooth's head flare up in surprise, then fold back down. "What is it?"

"You've got Jackie's memories here, right?" Aster gestures around to the millions of boxes she has stored here. "Got any of his from after he became Frost?" 

Tooth's eyes go wide for a moment, then she curls slightly, bringing a hand up to her chin as she thinks about it. "No." She finally says. "He'd lost all his teeth as a kid before Manny called him."

"Dammit." Bunny mutters, looking down at the ground. He'd hoped... Well. It'd been a long shot anyway.

"Why?" Tooth asks, and this time there's only curiosity in her tone. 

"Got me a hope." Aster shakes his head, looking back up at her. "I'll tell ya if it pans out. Less hurt if it don't work out." 

Tooth gives him a crooked smile, and he can see her throat work a few times before she can speak again. "Hope it works out." She says roughly, but sincerely.

"Cheers." Aster nods, then opens up a rabbit tunnel and dashes away.

* * *

Sandy nearly grabs him with a dreamsand whip to toss him into the night sky when Aster appears. In Aster's defence, it _might_ have been a bit of a surprise, but Sandy hadn't paid any attention to Aster's shouts, and therefore jumping onto the Sandman's passing cloud had seemed like the logical choice at the time. 

In retrospect, especially after Pitch's attack that gained them Jack as a new Guardian, probably not the wisest of choices. 

Sandy holds a hand to his chest, looking as if he'd had a heart in his sand formed body, it would have been attempting to beat its way out. "Sorry." Aster mutters, feeling bad for startling his friend that way.

Sandy waves it off, giving him a mock stern look for the scare. A question mark appears above Sandy's head, expression shifting to curiosity. 

"Odd question bout yer dreamsand." Aster holds up a finger. "We all know Jack disappears in the summer. Did ya ever send him dreams?"

Sandy's eyes go wide, hurt flashing momentarily, then he shakes his head. Sand shapes appear, a sun, and Sandy attempting to send streams of dream sand to the a tiny sleeper, only to never find the sleeper. The sun changes to a snowflake, and suddenly the sand reaches the sleeper. "Yer sand couldn't reach him in the summer." Aster breathes, reaching up to brush the tiny sleeping figure. "But ya could in the winter."

He gets a nod in return, Sandy looking sad. "Thank you." Aster picks up Sandy and gives him a tight hug before setting him down again. "You've given me hope."

Sandy looks slightly dazed and more than a little confused at Aster's comment. "I'll tell ya when it pans out." Aster grins, jumping off the edge of the dreamsand cloud, catching himself on a tree, before leaping to another until he's back on the ground and into the tunnels. 

All he can do is wait now.

* * *

"Come on out, Jackie." Aster calls, sitting against a tree next to Jack's lake in Burgess. There's a bite to the air, a crispness that heralds the beginning of autumn.  
  
A touch of Frost in the air.  
  
There's a glimmer out of the corner of his eye, just a faint outline, and an echo of a laugh. "Figured it out, did you?" Jack's voice is barely a whisper on the breeze, Aster's ears twitching as he focuses on it.  
  
"It's yer name, ain't it?" Aster turns his head and tries to get the figure to become clearer, but it's like seeing the ice that usually covers Jack, without Jack actually being there. "Jack **Frost**."  
  
Made ice and snow, which is why he had no blood.  
  
There's a motion, like Jack is doing a slow clap, slow sarcastic applause, but there's no sound to accompany it. Not enough solid mass. "Got it in one, Cottontail." Jack's voice laughs.  
  
"The reason you're never around in Summer is that y'can't." Aster extrapolates, watching the outline of Jack wander around him. 

He'd had a theory, but he craves more than guesswork, because even with Sandy verifying he couldn't send his dreams to Jack in the Summer, he hadn’t been sure at all until right this moment.  "Took a bit to put it together, that we don't see ya after mid-Spring, and then not again for a few weeks after the first frost of the year."  
  
"It takes a while for it to get cold enough to put myself back together." Jack admits, circling behind Aster before making an appearance on Aster's other side.  
  
"But y'always come back." Aster verifies.  
  
"Yup." Jack laughs, and there's a bit of a bitter bite to it. "Not much can really permanently hurt me. If something happens during Autumn or Winter I just reform, but it's harder to stay together the later in Spring it goes."  
  
Aster files that away for later conversations, how many times something like this has happened. And how often Jack has tried.  
  
But it does mean that Jack, much like Aster, is effectively immortal. It's something that both cheers and saddens him. It’s a heavy weight, and a lonely one.  
  
"Always assumed ya did some sort of hibernation." Aster shrugs, turning his head so he can keep Jack in view.  
  
Jack seems to tilt his head to the side in contemplation. "I guess you could call it that." He agrees, circling back around Aster again. It’s a familiar pattern for Jack, and not for the first time Aster wonders if Jack knows what he's doing, what the circling signifies to a Pooka.  
  
"So I gotta ask." Aster resists the urge to grind his teeth together in a happy rumble. "Frosty the Snowman-?"  
  
Jack pauses, something annoyed about the set of his shoulders. "That was an extremely annoying year." He growls, cat-like, all lashing tail and wounded pride. 

Aster laughs, something easing in his chest. He taps the ground with a foot, a tunnel opening up. He reaches in, pulling out Jack's staff. "Thought y'might like this." He says, tossing it in Jack's direction. 

The staff flies through the air, then suddenly stops, Jack's silhouette solidifying a bit, and Aster barely keeps himself from preening. "Hope you don't mind.” Aster grins. “I grew her back together again."  
  
"Thanks!" He can see the bright grin on Jack's face this time, even as he can see the trees around them through Jack. Jack's voice is a bit closer to normal, no longer quite a whisper. "Usually takes me a while to find where all the pieces went."  
  
Aster huffs in amusement. Upon inspection, the staff was mostly ice, much like Jack is.  "Ya tied here, or would a change in location help?"  
  
Jack's merriment fades. "I can't... the Warren..." He trails off, looking uncomfortable, cradling the staff to his chest.  
  
The springtime heat of the Warren would probably melt Jack gone again, if he's made of fresh snow and ice.  
  
"Was thinkin' the Pole." Aster gestures in a northerly direction. "North's bein' a right dill, thinking he offed ya."  
  
Something he hopes that Jack's reappearance will help with.  
  
"What?!" Jack exclaims, loud enough to almost be a normal speaking voice. Shock and horror flash across his face for a moment before settling on confusion. "...You didn't think I was gone for good."  
  
"I hoped." Aster shrugs. He'd hoped a **lot**. That Jack wasn't dead, that he'd figured it out correctly. That he'd see Jack in the frost, in the **Fall**.  
  
Jack stares at him for a moment, then starts laughing. "Of course you did." He says fondly, wiping at his eyes as giggles of mirth bubble out of him.  
  
"Kinda my schtick." Aster agrees, pulling out a globe and polishing it on his arm for a moment, before holding it up like an offering. Jack nods, a tentative grin on his face as his laughter fades away.  
  
"North's Workshop." Aster tells the globe, then tosses it, a bright explosion of light of magic blinding him for a second before the portal solidifies. Aster glances over a Jack, who is looking at the portal with an expression of blatant longing and worry.  
  
A few more weeks until he was solid, Aster remembers. He doubts any of Jack’s believers would be able to see him right now, as ghostlike Jack appears, leaving Jack trapped in isolation.   
  
Aster thinks of Icarus, who had been trapped in the labyrinth with the Minotaur and his father. And when given a chance for freedom, was warned not to fly too high or too low, but to stick to the of light.  
  
Jack's description, of loving warmth, not light, and thinks Jack's never really been one not to fly too high or to fast.  
  
They'll just have to be there when Jack falls.  
  
"Follow the path of the light." Aster offers, hiding his uncertainty if this will work. Better chance than the heat of his tunnels. "I'll follow."  
  
Not too close, or Jack would melt. Not too far, least weight of isolation and darkness drag him under.  
  
Jack nods, giving Aster a quick salute, then jumping through. Aster gives it a three count, then follows, ignoring the way lunch tries to make a reappearance in the back of his throat at the swirling magic, so strange from his own.  
  
He pops out at the Pole, looking around and immediately spotting Jack, who is breathing in the frost tinted air with a look of obvious enjoyment. The Guardian of Fun is almost completely solid, just a tinge of translucency on the edges. "I've tried to get here before, in the Autumn." Jack whispers, giving Aster a delighted look. "But whenever I got too far from the lake, I'd just defrost and reform a few days later."

Probably not enough magic in the area outside of Burgess to help Jack become solid. Where as the Pole was filled with latent magic. Enough that Jack didn't have to wait weeks to get strong enough for the trip. Aster grins with satisfaction and delight as the portal winks out of existence behind him. One problem solved. 

"OI, NORTH!" He bellows, making Jack jump. "LIKE HELIOS RISING IN THE DAWN, OUR PRODIGAL SON RETURNS!"    
  
"Helios, really?" Jack drawls, amused.  
  
Aster chuckles as North's footsteps pound in the distance, screams from the yetis echoing. "Didn't think North'd like references to me favourite Greek myth." Aster shrugs. "I'm a might more fond of Persephone."  
  
"-Whose appearance above ground heralds the return of Spring." Jack rolls his eyes, but his expression is fond at the mention of Aster's season.  
  
It's more about the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that Aster likes, but that's for another conversation. North barrels past Aster to tackle Jack in a tight hug, laughing and crying all at the same time.  
  
Jack hugs North back, no sign of distress on his face at the contact, laughing and crying as well. and something eases in Aster's chest.  
  
Daedalus was a master craftsman and creator of wonders, Icarus’ father, and the one who gave Icarus wings that lead to his fall. Unlike Daedalus, North has his prodigal son back.   
  
Aster turns his head, letting them have their moment together. They're gonna need to talk about the fact that Jack is apparently immortal and made of ice later, figure out what they can do to help.  
  
But for right now, he can bask in the knowledge that they can do that later.  
  
-fin-  

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS: Jack's kinda killed but not really because his physical body is made of ice and reborn every Autumn. He just, yanno, forgot to tell everyone else that. Also, Bunny may be a Time Lord.  
>   
> [HealingMichiko tagged me on tumblr about a Greek word that means 'Giver of Hope'](https://healingmichiko.tumblr.com/post/160584113798/terpsikeraunos-ancient-greek-word-of-the-day) and Jack/Bunny feels, which combined with a tumblr post [Icarus in Greek Myths](https://icka-notes.tumblr.com/post/160672647143/papillon-noirsblog-erinye-skippercifer), and just weird brain stuff about Jack Frost being made of Frost and yeah. *jazz hands*


End file.
